Thriller (28 page)

far. He jumped out as if impatient to get to some important task,

strode rapidly to the entrance. Two majors reached the entrance a

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hair before he did—which he had arranged by slowing his pace.

The majors both stopped and deferred to him. He waved them

ahead with an impatient gesture of his swagger stick: asserting his

rank, showing democratic largesse and distracting the guard at the

front door.

The two majors hurried on into the building so as to not keep

the colonel waiting. Not much more than an inch behind them,

Hareet merely flashed his credentials to the guard. The guard,

hurried by three credentials almost together, and the need to

give three fast salutes, barely glanced at the tall colonel’s identification.

Hareet was inside the building.

The long corridors were dim, cool and high-vaulted. Hareet

strode loudly along the corridors until he located the office of

the chief of supply. There was light under the door and the low

sound of steady activity inside. As the peddler had predicted, the

office of the chief of supply was working long and late this night.

Hareet walked into a lounge for officers only. He entered, went

into the lavatory, and then into a booth. Inside the booth, he removed all his makeup. He changed his rank to major. He changed

his insignia to that of an artillery unit stationed far to the south.

He tore all the credentials of Colonel Aziz Ramdi into small

pieces and flushed them down the toilet, removed the credentials for a major of a tank unit in the south from a thin pouch

under his clothes. He flushed the pieces of the pouch. He remained in the lounge for an hour, absorbed in reading some important report.

Each hour, he walked back to check the office of the chief of

supply. Twice, he went into the officers’ dayroom and read a

magazine. He drank the thick Turkish coffee the orderly served.

In his normal appearance, there would be no one who could

know him, as far as the peddler knew there were no officers from

the distant artillery unit in the capital at this time, all field units

being on twenty-four-hour alert.

At midnight, the office of the chief of supply was as dark and

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silent as all the other offices. As Hareet had been sure they would,

all the officers from the chief of staff on down had gone to rest

or party. Tomorrow would be a great day, tonight the building

was quiet. Only the guards moved in the corridors of the headquarters.

Hareet waited until a guard had made his rounds of the corridor outside the office of the chief of supply. The corridor silent

and empty, Hareet opened the door of the office with a picklock,

slipped inside, his knife ready on the remote chance someone

had been left behind, perhaps asleep.

No one had.

The door into the windowless file room was open. Hareet fitted a small light to his head and crouched to inspect the vault.

It was a simple key-locked vault from British days such as the

peddler had reported. Hareet picked the lock with no trouble,

swung the door open.

The documents he needed were neatly filed in their proper

places. The folders were sealed with a wire-and-plastic seal that

had to be broken to open the folder. Hareet broke the seal and

removed the documents. They felt faintly slippery to his touch.

Tomorrow, ultraviolet light would reveal Hareet’s prints, but that

would not matter.

He photographed the documents with the miniature camera

that had been hidden in the built-up heel of his boot. There were

ten lists with maps and dated overlays. The overlays were all new

and dated that day. Hareet photographed each document. They

became faintly darker under the heat of his intense light. He unloaded the roll of microfilm and placed it in its container in his

breast pocket.

He took a second roll of film from his other heel, reloaded the

camera and took a second set of photographs.

He returned the documents to their files, resealed the folders

as best he could, replaced the folders in the vault and relocked

the vault.

He left the file room.

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Behind the door of the dark office he sat at the general’s desk,

smoked a slow cigarette, looked around this high-level office of

the enemy and waited for the guard to make his next round. It

took a second and a third cigarette. He smoked deeply, enjoying

the relaxation.

When the guard had passed, he slipped out of the office of the

chief of supply, relocked the office door and walked openly again

to the lounge for officers. Inside a booth once more, he sat and

went to sleep with his head against the wall.

Dawn arrived soon after five o’clock that morning.

The building came slowly to life. Vehicles drove up and parked

outside. Orders were shouted all through the courtyard and at

the gates. The corridors echoed with the smart clicking of heels,

and the morning greetings of the elite officers. Heavy-booted

footsteps rang all through the building. Office doors opened and

closed like the ragged sound of small artillery.

Hareet waited until just after six o’clock when the initial chaos

had slowed to a steady sound of routine.

Inside the booth he took a large piece of wrapped halvah from

his pocket, unwrapped it, and embedded the second roll of microfilm inside until it was completely covered with the soft confection.

He left the booth, went out into the lounge that was still empty

at the early hour and returned to the corridor.

Hareet walked calmly toward the front door. Visiting officers

were being checked in by the sleepy night-shift guards. Excitement and confusion were high at the door—the fever of impending war in any army. The day-shift guards were forming in

the courtyard. The ragged fellahin servants were sweeping the

courtyard, watering it down in preparation for the heat of the day

to come.

Already the sun was up. It was going to be a dazzling day. Far

across the courtyard at the front gate, Hareet could see the night-
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shift guards stretching the weariness from their bones, waiting

for their relief. Vehicles coughed and sputtered in the morning

air. The officers continued to pour in. No one was going out.

Hareet waited until the day-shift guards forming outside began

to march to the posts to make the official transfer with the nightshift guards. He placed his pistol in his pocket, checked the film

in his breast pocket, and when a large group of officers came

across the courtyard and approached the front entrance, strode

out and walked straight up to the door.

The officers thronged in the entrance.

A guard turned around to check Hareet’s credentials.

There was a faint click somewhere in the wall, and an alarm

began to sound, echoing through the building and out across the

courtyard. The guard at the door stared at Hareet.

Hareet stabbed him in the heart, held the man’s body close

against him, and walked out into the courtyard through the confused group of incoming officers.

For a long moment, as the alarm continued to sound through

the headquarters and over the courtyard in the bright morning,

the officers and guards milled around and shouted and no one

noticed Hareet walking across the courtyard away from both the

building and the front gate still carrying the dead guard upright

against him as if they were hurrying together toward some important official duty.

Then the officer of the guard saw them out there all alone and

going in the odd direction, saw that one man was holding up the

other. He ran after them, shouting, “You out there! You, Major!

Stop where you are! Stop—”

Hareet dropped the dead guard, drew his pistol and shot the

running officer of the guard. Then he turned and ran on across

the courtyard toward the small barred side gate where he knew

there was only one guard.

Pandemonium flowed through the building and the courtyard

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as the guards and officers all grabbed for their weapons. Quickly

the day-shift and night-shift guards all spotted Hareet and began

to converge on him. The guard at the side gate fired and missed.

Hareet shot the guard down.

He leaped for the wall. A bullet hit him in the leg, buckled it.

He collapsed, rolled, and struggled up again. He grasped the

bars of the gate and hauled himself up toward the top of the wall.

Outside the wall, the two armored cars on patrol both careened

into the street. Hareet reached the top of the wall.

A burst of fire struck him in the back. The machine guns on

the armored cars cut him in two. Two rifle bullets exploded in

his head. His body, at the very top of the wall, fell back to the

stones of the courtyard.

The night-shift and day-shift guards stood all around Captain

Hareet’s body, uncertain what to do, perhaps awed by the daring

escape that had failed.

A colonel of military police pushed through the guards and

shot Hareet in the head again.

The colonel bent down, searched, and found the microfilm in

Hareet’s breast pocket. The colonel laughed and kicked the dead

body. Some soldiers laughed now, spat on Hareet’s lifeless eyes.

“Cut his head off,” the colonel of military police ordered.

“Hang it on the gate with a sign: Pig of a Spy!”

A general of the staff walked slowly up, and the soldiers and other

officers gave way. The general looked down at Hareet’s body. The

colonel of military police handed the general the roll of microfilm.

“Take his body and identify it, Colonel, before you cut off any

heads,” the general said. “A very stupid attempt, but well done.

He very nearly escaped.”

“A desperate attempt,” the colonel sneered. “A hopeless attempt. They are afraid of us, General.”

“Of course they are afraid of us, as we are afraid of them,” the

general said almost wearily. “Find out what it was they wanted,

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Colonel, what he has on that microfilm. Not that it matters now,

but they might try again.”

“They will always fail,” the colonel insisted. He did not like

to be told he was afraid of the enemy. That was weak, defeatist

talk. He would watch the general. But now he looked down

again at the dead body. “The fool never knew it would have done

him no good to succeed. We would locate what he took even if

he had escaped, and instantly change our plans.”

The colonel laughed. Hareet’s body was taken away. The chief

of supply quickly identified the enormity of the theft and posted a

twenty-four-hour guard at his door. Even though, he explained to

the army commander, there was no way anyone could get that data

without the chief of supply knowing it instantly and changing it.

In any event, the chief of supply assured the army commander, the

data was still secret and safe, there was no need to change the vital

plans with so little time left. The army commander was relieved,

such a change could have delayed them for days.

Captain Hareet was soon identified, and his head cut off and

hung on the gates for the fellahin to jeer at.

The headquarters returned to its routine. Officers came and

went in a steady stream. The fellahin servants cleaned the courtyard while the officers prepared for war. The hardworking, important and excited officers ignored the ragged peasants. One of

the fellahin swept up a large piece of discarded halvah. He

dropped the halvah into his trash sack. Eventually he took the

sack to a trash box near the small barred gate in the side wall

where Hareet had died.

Soon, a truck picked up the trash boxes and drove them to the

city waste dump. Out at the dump, a ragged peddler scraped

among the boxes. Later, the same peddler hawked wares in front

of a hotel near the eastern edge of the city.

A pretty Italian tourist woman bought a small urn from the

peddler.

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* * *

That evening, the pretty Italian tourist checked out of her

small hotel and drove from the city to a deserted beach. On the

beach, she stripped down and swam out to sea.

Thirty-six hours later, the attack was launched. Ten hours

after that, the war was essentially over. All the supply depots, ammunition dumps and fuel centers of the attacking army were destroyed within ten hours of the initial attack.

Some weeks later, Lieutenant Greta Frank sat alone on a hill

in the north of her country and looked out toward the border

beyond the orange trees and olive groves. The border was quiet.

It was not yet safe, but it was becoming safer.

Greta cried.

The minister came up the hill and squatted down in the dry

dust. His hard gray eyes looked out toward the border.

“There was no other way,” the minister said. “They had to be

convinced that he had tried and failed. They had to catch him—

and not alive. He knew it was the only plan that would work.”

“And you knew,” Greta said.

“I knew.”

“You knew before we went.”

The minister drew patterns in the dust with his walking stick.

“Why didn’t you go there and do it yourself?” Greta asked.